


Current of Small Things

by WitchStuff



Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: Comfort, Courtship, F/M, Falling In Love, Friendship, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 18:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2239755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WitchStuff/pseuds/WitchStuff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If it's not the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, it's the annoying pilot. Either way, an especially bad morning in the life of Zoe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Current of Small Things

**Author's Note:**

> Some PTSD, talk of triggers and flashbacks of war. Also, Wash pees.

 

Something was about to change, though Zoe didn't know it at the time. At the time she simply crashed from restless sleep to frantic reality, the way it had always happened. That was the thing - it had started like many other times, too many for Zoe to hope that a change was coming. Or was already happening, waiting for her to catch up.

*

Crash.

She is sitting wide awake on her bunk on Serenity, going into atmo in early hours of dawn on Galilee West. She's wide awake in the sense that her eyes are open wide and staring and she sees everything here in her bunk on Serenity, coming to a landing on Galilee West in the early hours of dawn. She can see her clothes: they are folded on a chair by a desk near a wall with a comm system she can use to call for help but she never does. She feels the wall at her back, the slight tremor of Serenity aligning with the coming ground, steadied quickly by sure and loving hands.

And it's quiet. Zoe knows how quiet it is because it's been an ugly week, and everyone is bone-tired, and all of them 'cept her and the pilot are sleeping soundly, so there ain't much going on beyond the sounds of Serenity. And yet Zoe hears it, she feels it, it's all around her, the smells, bombs exploding in her ear, red is soaking the floor of her bunk, limbs flying through the air again and again in front of her wide opened eyes, perfect, bloody, arches that start nowhere and go nowhere. But she knows it ain't happening now. It ain't happening now. She sees her bunk and she knows the time, she knows that the floor is sparkling clean because she cleaned it her own self yesterday, but the blood still stains it and stains through her uniform, but her clothes are folded neatly on a chair and they are whole and crisp, and yet… She would close her eyes to this if it would make it go away but it won't, she knows. Better by far to keep them open, make sure that even though there are bombs and bullets, shouting and horrified yelling, and that gorram smell she can't get out of her nose, despite the fact that it's all happening now, right now, it's not, it's happening then, and right now she's in her bunk on Serenity, and Serenity is touching the frozen ground of Galilee West, light as a feather.

Zoe knows that if she moves from this perfectly strategic hiding spot the sniper gets her. But she also knows that on Serenity, she has a job, that the pilot might need help loading the mule, and definitely will need help making the drop, so she begins the process of making her limbs unfreeze, unfold.

One foot touches the floor heavily. No feather-lightness here, not for Zoe, not for years now. She goes to do her job.

*

Coming down the stairs to the cargo bay, she sees the ramp is down, and the ship is opened to the not-quite-day outside. Crates all stacked and ready to be loaded, but no pilot in sight. When her booted foot touches the bottom step, she is suddenly seized by a flashback again, so hard she needs to sit down for a full two minutes on the bottom stair. She's very glad that Washburne is nowhere to be seen. She holds herself tight until the ground stops rumbling and the sound of skiffs zooming by fades away, then pointedly stands up. She crosses the cargo bay, steps outside to find the pilot.

*

Zoe has to go around the ship to find him, and at first she thinks he's smoking - his back is to her and he's holding something in front of him, and she thought she saw smoke. She never noticed the pilot smoking before, and she'd been paying close attention to everything the man does, him being completely untrustworthy. Zoe grew up on ships all her life, she knows how hard it is on the smokers. Ship hands that run outside, gasping for a smoke the moment they touch ground, never seem to last very long as crew. The black is hard on vices.

But there was no smoke after all, it was just his breath in the cool morning air. When she steps closer it becomes clear that he isn't smoking, he's taking a piss. He's humming some old tune, and pissing in the crisp morning air. Zoe doesn't go further, but she doesn't turn back, she just stands there, waiting.

Tucking everything in and closing his trousers, he's more singing than humming now. "I can show you…" Zoe hears him, his voice very small but very steady in the silence of rocks and distant mountains. "Rain… I don't mind… Shine, the weather's… Aiya!" he turns and sees her standing there with her arms folded across her chest, and jumps a little, then freezes with surprise. "Holy tsway-niou," he says at last.

"You realize, pilot, if I came up this hill with a mind to kill you, you'd be humped right now." Seeing this information register, she feels a surprising amount of gloating pleasure, and goes for the kill. "Dead on the ground, with your dick in your hands."

The pilot stares at her a couple of seconds more.

"…and in such cold weather, too. Could be a might embarrassing," he says finally, and tucks his hands into the pockets of his cargo pants. Annoyance washes over Zoe in a Washburne-related manner she's grown accustom to lately. Annoyed at him for looking so much like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar, instead of a grown man who risked his life and that of his ship and sleeping crew by not watching his back. The most annoying part is that he's smiling now, completely unaware of how pissed off she is, unaware that in another time, another reality, she can see him lying there bleeding, because he made one mistake, zigged when he shoulda zagged.

Zoe takes a breath and turns towards the ship, going around to start the work. Being pissed off is pointless, and Zoe doesn't do pointless things.

*

Mule's all packed and the cargo bay all squared away by the time the sun makes an effort to properly appear. Rain drizzles from the concrete colored sky and somehow the air's a mite less cold for it. Zoe steps down Serenity's ramp, closes her tight, while the pilot checks the goods on the mule one more time, then steps up and waits for her. There's silence between them, the kind Zoe never knew the man is capable of. It's comfortable and business-like, and it's good. She cares a lot less that she couldn't faze him before.

*

"Can you hear me…" he sings, his voice barely noticeable under the rumble of mule on rocks, but she notices. It ain't unpleasant. "Hmm… that when it rains and shines… It's just a state of mind…."

Crash!

Zoe's arms instinctively go to shield her abdomen from sniper, zoomies, skiffs, through-and-through fracture wounds. It's just a bump in the road, but the mule took it hard. Zoe is in the here and now enough to not reach for her gun or disgrace herself in any other way. But bone memory is strong, and her body remembers all the traumas, reacts to every threat as if it's fresh, and it's the kind of ghostly pain that starts nowhere and goes nowhere.

Fuck, she thinks, this is a bad morning, and she gulps air in big bites, against her own will. Washburne, gorram him, is giving her an appraising eye. However, he doesn't ask, proving that despite all former evidence, he does possess some senses of self preservation. But she feels him adjusting, and he makes the rest of the ride slower, taking extra care around boulders and holes.

"Would you just…" Annoyance at him comes back, tenfold. At herself too, that this is still happening to her after all this time. She ain't never had a flashback in front of any person wasn't her captain. Ain't never lost control like that, and now this guy knows about her more than she ever planned on showing anyone. "Just drive the chou ma niao mule and get us where we're going. I don't need a babysitter."

"You should learn to relax, Zoe," the pilot says. Zoe gives him her coldest, darkest stare, but he took her by surprise and she's just upside-down enough right now to let that show, too. He smiles. Gorram that man! Just smiles and keeps driving in the rain at a slower, safer speed. "I'm not looking to take anything from you, you know." He says then, his eyes on the road and his voice steady and quiet, and for some insane reason, she feels the words in her gut.

She doesn't move and doesn't look at him again. After a moment he starts talking, and it's the chipper steady flow of inane words she's used to be getting from him. He talks about the rain, how he likes it, how he doesn't mind the cold. Completely unabashed, he mentions the previous pissing incident, joking that he's sure she was a total gentleman about it, but if she did see anything, he must again remind her that is was freakin' cold, and please could she be kind to him in her memoirs.

Zoe doesn't smile, and he goes on, about his home planet, the way it used to rain ink, or, no, it didn't, they just called it that, because of the pollution. Explains that's why he likes the clean crisp air, the clear curtain of rain. Doesn't mind that the sun's not out at all.

Zoe's face doesn't lose its stern expression, even though she's enjoying the air her own self, feels all woke up from it, feels fresh. She doesn't join in on the small talk, a habit she ain't never seen the point of. Washburne doesn't seem to need a companion one bit and he prattles on about this place and that, planets he's been on, cities he couldn't wait to leave. Then he stops abruptly and sends a quick look her way. She's shocked to see him looking somewhat timid, almost sheepish. He takes a deep breath, seems he came to some life-altering decision. "Been to many places, but I gotta say. The here and now feels pretty good to me."

Zoe thinks she gets the current, some small thing shifted and changed in that moment, wiggled and made room for other small things like it. Zoe doesn't quite understand it and she don't like it, but denying it would be pointless, and she doesn't do pointless things.

*  
"That when it rains and shine. It's just a state of mind…" Washburne's voice trails off, and the soft rain makes it echo, makes it intimate.

Her eyes zoom in on Wash's hand on the controls, the slight tightness in the veins as he adjusts, compensates for the rocky terrain. She understands clearly that he's doing this for her, for her without even really knowing why she needs it. Something becomes very clear, she gets the current, she knows she could be safe, if she makes the choice. She could be steadied by sure and loving hands if she says the word, makes the slightest gesture.

"I can show you…"

Zoe knows full well that she is in the here and now.  


**THE END**  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Written under the nick WhichWitch in 2008 for the "Characters of Color Love Fest" at LiveJournal (choc_fic). My thanks to Sarahetc for a fantastic beta job.
> 
> The challenger gave these lyrics for inspiration:  
> "Rain fall from concrete colored sky / No boy, don't speak now you just / Drive, drive, drive / Take me through make me feel alive, alive / When I ride with you".  
> Additional lyrics in the story by The Beatles.


End file.
